1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a client terminal, another client terminal providing the client terminal with data or a function, a service providing device, and a service discovery method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A large number of investigations have been carried out on mechanisms, as service discovery protocols, by which a client terminal discovers another service. For example, Jini, UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), SLP (Service Location Protocol), and the like are proposed as protocols defining procedures to discover a service. According to a service discovery protocol, a client utilizing services designates a service to request and broadcasts it in the surrounding environment through its service request function. A service that has received the request, through its service reply function, generates a service reply message and sends it to the client in reply when a service that the service itself provides matches the service described in the service request from the client. As stated above, there has been disclosed a technology for efficiently discovering a participant to communicate with (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2004-88428, and United States Publication No. 2003/0172159).
Moreover, since a service has no knowledge of a client to connect to before a connection is made, the service is required to send service replies back to an indefinite number of clients that are requesting a connection. Further, to prove the identity of the service itself, it is important for the service to add a digital signature to the service reply. Although this digital signature function is not always incorporated in the existing service discovery protocols, SLP provides this function as an option. The use of the function of digital-signing a service reply can prevent an attack of a malicious service sending a counterfeit service reply and hampering a client from connecting to a legitimate service.
However, according to the above conventional technology, the service reply function of the service needs to reply to service requests from an indefinite number of nonspecified clients. Therefore, if a malicious client sent an enormous number of service requests, the service needs to add digital signatures to service replies and send them back to those service requests. Since the digital signature requires the computational processing that would be a heavy load to a service with a limited computing capability such as a digital camera, there arises a problem that the service which is computing an enormous number of digital signatures will be depleted of the CPU resource and unable to process a new service request.
In view of the above problem, an object of the present invention is to provide a client terminal, a service providing device and a service discovery method which enable a legitimate client to discover a service in as short a time as normal and to connect thereto even when a malicious client sent an enormous number of service requests.